Careerism the curse of this age
This saturday, I left office early at 7:00 pm as I was compeltely drained. I went out shopping when there wasn't any need to I spent about 1.2k in about an hour thanks to my credit card. As i was riding back home I realized that I had bought stuff which I simply didn't need.
It was so irratinoal and I wanted to know why I had done that. I was analysing the sequence of events and thoughts, I did not want to go home early as I wasn't is a mood to read books and sitting at my room without books with none to talk to on a weekend can be nerve racking. I wanted to go out and do something, the easiest thing to do is of course shopping.
This got me thinking about life or this rat race that we run in our corporate world. I realized that my problem was I did not want to go to an empty house I wanted to talk to someone on the weekend and I did not have my family with me. Producerism was the phenomena during the medival times industrial revolution, consumerism was the phenomena until now and now there is this complecation of careerism as well.
We leave our loved ones behind and go in search of our career and pursue it with great passion all over the world. Why because we want to achieve something in life? Perhaps so, but not quite. Do we pursue our career because we want money? Perhaps so but not quite. Do we persue our career because its an issue of prestige in society? Perhaps so, but no quite.
I think we pursue our career because we want our families to be happy. We want our loved ones to take joy in our accomplishments, we want our them to enjoy our money, we want to give them a sense of significance in the society. To get ourselves into good careers we go to colleges far away from our homes, we go to places far off to work and thereby estrange ourselves from our families. And then we slog, ask God for help and slog to get our careers right. We have no time for our family, we have no time for our friends all time we have is for our career improvement and at the end of the day all we have is money which we end up spending in shopping or eating in restraunts or movie theaters. So at the end of the day we dont have money either ;)
When all is done, all one realizes is that the goal of our career which is to love and support our family is not just unmet, but our career mitigates us from being loving towards our family. Our parents have spent so much of their energies growing us and in return we dont have time for them because we need to pursue our career. Its so bad.
Actually we are setting very bad role models to the next generation. They'll leave their parents much sooner. But that is how life goes.We need to learn to maintain the work-family balance. If we dont do that now, posterity will blame us just like we blame our ancestors for the evil of castism.
Some corporate big gun said this 'if you want to make the best investment go home early and throw ball to your son'. There is so much truth in this, but unfortunately we are so mistaken in our priorities that we build houses for our sons and daughter and earn wealth for them but have no time to play with them.
As we grow older we need to priorite work in such a way that we dont jeapordize our family life for the sake of career improvment. Most often we indiscriminately follow our passion which we envision as our career and forsake our family. There appears to be no middle ground, there is an either or. I am writing this mail at 10:30 in office during my weekend holiday (Sundays and Mondays are my weekend holidays).
As far as I know, I see only one solution to this debacle.
Dont follow your passion in life or career. Follow God's will alone. Your passion and God's will may or may not conincide, but God's will should have primacy. God's 'revealed' generic will in everyones life is to honour our parents and love our family.
As we go about living our rat race lets remember to get priorities right. God first, family next, career/passion after that, ambition should have no role at all. Ambition is the root of all evil.
It was so irratinoal and I wanted to know why I had done that. I was analysing the sequence of events and thoughts, I did not want to go home early as I wasn't is a mood to read books and sitting at my room without books with none to talk to on a weekend can be nerve racking. I wanted to go out and do something, the easiest thing to do is of course shopping.
This got me thinking about life or this rat race that we run in our corporate world. I realized that my problem was I did not want to go to an empty house I wanted to talk to someone on the weekend and I did not have my family with me. Producerism was the phenomena during the medival times industrial revolution, consumerism was the phenomena until now and now there is this complecation of careerism as well.
We leave our loved ones behind and go in search of our career and pursue it with great passion all over the world. Why because we want to achieve something in life? Perhaps so, but not quite. Do we pursue our career because we want money? Perhaps so but not quite. Do we persue our career because its an issue of prestige in society? Perhaps so, but no quite.
I think we pursue our career because we want our families to be happy. We want our loved ones to take joy in our accomplishments, we want our them to enjoy our money, we want to give them a sense of significance in the society. To get ourselves into good careers we go to colleges far away from our homes, we go to places far off to work and thereby estrange ourselves from our families. And then we slog, ask God for help and slog to get our careers right. We have no time for our family, we have no time for our friends all time we have is for our career improvement and at the end of the day all we have is money which we end up spending in shopping or eating in restraunts or movie theaters. So at the end of the day we dont have money either ;)
When all is done, all one realizes is that the goal of our career which is to love and support our family is not just unmet, but our career mitigates us from being loving towards our family. Our parents have spent so much of their energies growing us and in return we dont have time for them because we need to pursue our career. Its so bad.
Actually we are setting very bad role models to the next generation. They'll leave their parents much sooner. But that is how life goes.We need to learn to maintain the work-family balance. If we dont do that now, posterity will blame us just like we blame our ancestors for the evil of castism.
Some corporate big gun said this 'if you want to make the best investment go home early and throw ball to your son'. There is so much truth in this, but unfortunately we are so mistaken in our priorities that we build houses for our sons and daughter and earn wealth for them but have no time to play with them.
As we grow older we need to priorite work in such a way that we dont jeapordize our family life for the sake of career improvment. Most often we indiscriminately follow our passion which we envision as our career and forsake our family. There appears to be no middle ground, there is an either or. I am writing this mail at 10:30 in office during my weekend holiday (Sundays and Mondays are my weekend holidays).
As far as I know, I see only one solution to this debacle.
Dont follow your passion in life or career. Follow God's will alone. Your passion and God's will may or may not conincide, but God's will should have primacy. God's 'revealed' generic will in everyones life is to honour our parents and love our family.
As we go about living our rat race lets remember to get priorities right. God first, family next, career/passion after that, ambition should have no role at all. Ambition is the root of all evil.